Still Frame
by SecondString
Summary: I slept with Blaise the night you disappeared . . . DG, Part 1 of 2


I slept with Blaise the night you disappeared. Somehow comforting turned into kissing and it all went so fast that I did nothing to stop it. It wasn't at all how I imagined I'd be if I got the news. Yes, I had imagined them telling me of your death plenty of times during the war, mostly on those nights when you left me to go into battle and I had to lie in that big bed alone, staring at the fire and feeling the icy draft the windows couldn't keep out.

I imagined myself fainting, perhaps crying out your name once before I collapsed to the floor. Nothing prepared me for the actual experience. My foolish romantic notions were popped like so many soap bubbles in the air, and all that I felt was anger. How dare you leave me? How dare you promise to love me forever and then betray me by dying? The war was supposed to be over; you were just on a clean-up mission and you told me you'd be back in a few hours! You, who survived how many real battles, and hours of torture by your own father; you, the strongest person I had ever known – you let me think you were invincible and then got killed in a fight with a couple of low ranking Death Eaters.

I hated you that night – hated you perhaps more than I loved you, and sleeping with Blaise felt like getting back at you. I wanted you to hurt as much as I did and I got a sick sort of comfort from thinking of your spirit watching me forget about you in the arms of another man.

But I paid for it. There I was, at the end of the war, my fiancé dead – well, officially only missing, they never did find your body, but no one could have survived the fall off that cliff, not even you – and pregnant with his best friend's child. Yes, one night with Blaise and I was with child.

It didn't much matter to me at the time, nothing did. He wanted us to be married right away to make his heir legal. Even then there was no pretense of love between us. Blaise worked something out with the Ministry to have you declared legally dead before the wedding; he wanted everything to be aboveboard and proper. No room for gossip. I was four months pregnant on my wedding day and don't remember a bit of it – not what I wore, not who was there. I've never even looked at the pictures.

Sebastian was born in December – my Christmas present come early I've always told him. For a time, I lost myself in him, burying my constant sense of loss under layers and layers of mother love. Sebastian, with his curly black hair and dark eyes and my freckles across his nose, is my angel: too good and too sweet to ever have come from so imperfect a union as mine with Blaise. He is heaven-sent, surely, and I have never deserved him.

It has been seven years, and time has peeled me like an onion, exposing the raw, stinging hurt I've hidden so long. Blaise accuses me of neglecting our son – rich, coming from the man who could care less about the boy, who spends most of his time abroad with one girlfriend or another. He says such things to hurt me because he knows I care for our son but I'll never care for him. Oh, Sebastian, I never wished such a life for you! I recognize the irony of it – my son growing up with a father who only regards him as an heir and a mother who is cold, emotionally absent – I've given him _your_ childhood, but how I wish I could change it!

I think I must have died that night you disappeared; I died but didn't know it. For all my life since then has felt like a dream and I am sleepwalking my way through it. The days come and go, I speak when I am spoken to, I eat, I sleep, I try not to think of you.

-----

I watch Mum and Father. I watch and I do a lot of thinking. I can tell that my parents aren't like other parents. They never fight, like Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur do, but I think Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur like each other better than my parents do.

My mum is the most beautiful woman in the whole world. I could look at her forever. But she never laughs and she always looks sad and I don't know what to do to fix her. I asked Father about it – I was scared to, but I did anyway – and he told me that women are nice to look at, but more trouble than they're worth. He said Mum was a fool and didn't know how to appreciate the life he'd given her; he said he could have just left her in the hovel he found her in, and he would have if he'd known how ungrateful she'd be. Father got very angry when he said this. He is usually angry about stuff, and I try to stay out of his way. I think he hates Mum, and sometimes I get scared that he will hurt her.

Today I decided I would try to cheer Mum up by showing her pictures of all the happy times she's had. There are photo albums in the library full of Christmases and my birthdays and the trip we once took to the sea. Mum sat with me on the big leather couch in the study and we looked at all the pictures together and she smiled and told me I had grown so much and was getter more handsome each day. Sometimes she seemed surprised when she'd see a picture of herself and she'd sigh and say she'd changed. I don't think she liked seeing those pictures, but I don't know why. She always looks beautiful in them. She has long red hair that looks warm, like a fire – she lets me brush it for her sometimes – and a face that looks nice. You know how you can just tell on some people? Like when you're walking down the street and some people just look nice and some people look mean. Well, Mum has one of the nice faces.

I saved one of the albums for last as a surprise. It was Mum's wedding album, and I found it all dusty on one of the lower shelves with pictures no one ever looks at anymore.

"One more!" I said as Mum set aside the pictures of my first birthday. "I saved the best for last."

Mum was very quiet when we looked at the wedding pictures, so quiet that I couldn't even hear her breathe.

"Look," I said, trying to be funny, "there I am." I pointed to her belly in the picture. Mum didn't seem to be paying attention. She was looking at the picture very carefully. Suddenly she cried out and dropped the album as if it had been on fire. There was a scary look in her eyes, and she looked at me as if I wasn't there – she looked right through me. Then she ran out of the room.

I didn't know what I had done. Did my joke hurt her? I had made her more upset instead of cheering her up. I picked up the wedding album. It was still open to the picture she had been looking at, and I looked at it, too, as if it would explain things to me. But it was just an ordinary photograph. There was Mum in her white dress with Father a bit behind her; they were coming down some steps and there were wedding guests all around them throwing flower petals into the air. Everyone looked happy. Well, almost everyone. There was one man in the back of the crowd and he had a mean face, but no one seemed to notice him.

-----

She came to the cliff screaming my name. It was pouring like hell and she tripped all the wards and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why this night, after all this time, she decided to come back. I knew she would come eventually – thus the wards, but the cruelty of waiting so many years astounded me. When I finally Apparated in, she was huddled near the ledge, soaked through, her voice hoarse but still calling for me, demanding I show myself.

When she saw me she froze and I had this sudden horrifying thought that she was going to faint and fall backwards over the ledge and I'd lose her all over again. I didn't think, I just rushed forward and pulled her to me, clutched her tight against my chest.

She was half wild, beating her fists against me and screaming at me incoherently, calling me a liar and asking "Why? Why? Why?" over and over again.

It turned me cold, to have her here accusing me after all she'd done. I pushed her away and took a good look at her. She was thinner than I'd ever seen her, and her wet hair clung to her pale cheeks and neck. She looked fragile and worn, like all the fight had gone out of her. Not like my Ginevra at all. Life with Blaise must not have suited her as well as she thought it would.

"Well, here I am," I said. "What changed your mind? What do you want with me?"

"What do I want with you?" she repeated, as if she didn't understand the question. "It's really you."

"It's really been me, Ginevra, these seven years, but that doesn't seem to have impressed you before. And it's really raining out, so unless you have something to say . . ."

"I don't understand," she said, and her voice sounded small against the pound of the rain. "Why didn't you come back?"

"You mean, after I was released from the Muggle hospital? When I came back just in time to find you marrying my best friend? Or after I sent you letter after letter to which you never responded? Oh, wait – you did reply to the last one. What was it you said? 'Please don't write me again. I don't want to see you. It would be painful to me. Blaise and I are happy now. Just leave me alone.' Why didn't I come back after that? Or after I showed up on your doorstep to beg you to reconsider and you had a house-elf turn me away. 'She doesn't want to see you,' the dirty little creature told me. Why didn't I come back after that? For fuck's sake, Ginevra! How many times was I supposed to come back?"

She looked at me like I was speaking another language.

"I never wrote you a letter. I never turned you away. You died. You fell off a cliff. _This_ cliff. The Ministry declared you legally dead. I don't understand."

I laughed.

"What are you driving at, Ginevra? That ruling was overturned as soon as I got out of the hospital. Your father filed the order himself; Blaise came by to apologize for acting rashly, and sent along your apologies for your 'change of heart.'"

"Blaise knew you were alive?"

"Everyone knows I'm alive. You damn well know it, too, and I'd like to know what kind of game you're playing at here."

"No game, Draco, no game," she replied, and I couldn't tell whether she was laughing or crying or doing both at the same time. "The complete ruin of my life can't be just a game. He knew this whole fucking time. I'll kill him."

And with that, she Disapparated.

-----

That fucking bastard knew all these years.

I found him in the study, sitting at his desk with a glass of cognac, pouring over a pile of letters from his Muggle businesses.

"Gods, what happened to you? You look like you tried to drown yourself," he said to me. "Go change before you ruin the carpeting." He went back to reading his letter.

"You knew," I said.

He looked up, startled perhaps at my tone of voice, and I saw him blanch slightly. He completely understood me.

"How did you find out?" he asked.

"Wedding picture. He's in one of our wedding pictures."

"Really?" he sounded amused. "How bold of him." He swirled the cognac in his glass and took another sip.

"Why?"

"Do you really need to ask that? You were pregnant with my heir. Malfoy was just going to complicate things. It was for your own good."

"For my own good?" I practically screamed at him. "I love him! You kept him from me all this time for my fucking good?"

"Don't give me that love bullshit, Gin. One rich husband is the same as any other to your type – you and I both know love has nothing to do with it."

"My type?" I spluttered in my rage.

"Oh come off it, Gin. You're gutter trash. You did well to snag Malfoy – very impressive. And when that meal ticket disappeared, you didn't miss a beat, did you? I didn't mind being used, don't worry. You may be gutter trash, but you're very fuckable gutter trash, and a pureblood. No, I've been very pleased with our arrangement, despite your appalling lack of gratitude."

"You bastard. You know that's not true. You know I love him and that I would have left you in a heartbeat if I'd known he was alive. That's why you hid him from me. And now you are going to tell him what you've done! You'll tell him or so help me, I will kill you."

He stood up so quickly I started back and bumped up against a bookcase. I could smell the sick sweetness of liquor on his breath when he got near enough, and when he slapped me across the face, I was too surprised to react.

"Let me make myself very clear to you. You will not threaten me ever again. You will put this Malfoy business out of your head. You are a Zabini now, and you'd be wise to start acting like one."

"Or what, Blaise?" I snapped back at him, my cheek smarting and tears stinging my eyes. "I'm leaving you and there is nothing you can do about it!"

"No?" he grinned at me, and I found myself actually afraid of him for the first time in my life. "If you even try to leave me, I'll have you locked up so fast you won't know what happened. And you will never, never see your son again." Laughing, he began to walk away.

"Ginny," he said, turning back to me when he reached the doorway, "you made your choice seven years ago, and I could give a rat's ass how you feel about it now."

I saw red. He would do it, he would keep my son from me, my darling angel boy. I didn't think; I grabbed the ornate letter opener from the desk and buried it in his back. It happened in one move, so quickly I don't think he saw it coming. I killed him, the sodding bastard. I killed my husband.

-----

I Apparated in front of the Zabini mansion and when the house-elf tried to turn me from the door, I pushed past it and rushed inside. Ginevra looked crazy when she Disapparated, and I had a premonition that something bad was going to happen.

I could hear angry voices from the foyer but the house-elf was slowing me down as I made my way towards them.

"No, Master says you mustn't come in! Master will kill Raffie if Mistress sees you!"

I had to stun the little beast to get by it, but I was still too late.

I walked into Zabini's study to find Ginevra kneeling over his body, covered in blood.

"Oh, Draco!" she sobbed when she saw me. "He's kept me from you for all these years! He was never going to let me see you! I had to do it! I had to!"

She was in shock – that much was clear. But what she was saying, what she had said at the cliff – it all finally made sense. She really had thought me dead. Gods, Zabini had played us both for fools! My Ginevra, what hells he put you through! I would have killed him myself if he wasn't already dead.

I pulled her away from the body and she sobbed into my shoulder.

"My darling girl," I murmured into her hair. "I'm here now, and I'll never leave you again."

She whispered my name and the feel of her lips against my neck brought a thousand memories crashing down on me. This was my Ginevra, my love; I was holding her again.

Suddenly my lips were on hers and she was burning me with her kisses and I was returning them so forcefully I must have hurt her.

"Draco," she said when we finally separated, "I killed Blaise. What's going to happen to me? Are they going to take me away from you?"

"Shhh," I soothed. "We'll figure something out. I've only just got you back. I can't lose you again."

-----

End Part 1 -- Please review and let me know what you think! Do you want a sad or a happy ending (I've got both endings -- not sure which to use)? Thanks for reading!


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